Kellyanne Conway appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, and defended White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s controversial press conference, in which he blatantly lied about the inauguration crowd size, and accused the media of false reporting.
When host Chuck Todd asked Conway why Spicer presented the media with “falsehoods,” she insisted that they were simply “alternative facts.”
“You’re saying it’s a falsehood, and they’re giving—Sean Spicer, our press secretary, gave alternative facts to that,” she said.
Despite being admittedly befuddled, Todd refused to back down, and told Conway that “alternative facts are not facts. They are falsehoods.”
Spicer came under fire Saturday, when he claimed that that Friday’s inauguration crowd was the largest in the history of the country, a statement that is easily disprovable by the many aerial photographs taken that day, which show a crowd far smaller than past inaugurations.
Conway made no mention of the photographs Sunday, and instead claimed that it’s impossible to know for sure how many people attended the inauguration. “I don’t think you can prove those numbers one way or another,” said. “There's no way to quantify crowd numbers.”
The interview was tense from the beginning, as Conway tried to deflect Todd’s questioning, prompting the unrelenting host to push her even further. “You did not answer the question of why the president asked the White House press secretary to come out in front of the podium for the first time and utter a falsehood,” Todd said. “Why did he do that? It undermines the credibility of the entire White House press office on day one.”
Meanwhile, #alternativefacts is already the number one trending topic on Twitter, as Americans try to make sense of their new reality.
It looks like Conway's tenure in the White House won't be quite as glamorous as Saturday Night Live pictured it in their Chicago-parodying skit that aired this week.
